A Density of Souls (29 page)

“Was that power?” Stephen cried.

Jordan lifted his head from the sand, coughing. He braced both hands in the sand and hauled his chest from the ground to a crude half-pushup. When he opened his eyes, Stephen saw he was crying.

“Was that power?”

Jordan sat up, his chest braced against his bent knees, trying to breathe. Stephen backed away from him, his anger flushed with shame. “How would you know?” Stephen spat out, with his last shred of fury. “How would you know?” He tried to summon his anger again to combat the threat of sobs.

Jordan rose to his knees as Stephen fell onto his back against the dune. He watched as the god of everything he wasn’t righted himself and approached. Jordan sank down into the sand next to Stephen. Stephen reflexively turned onto his side, as if anticipating the first swift punch of Jordan’s vengeance. He gripped Stephen’s shoulder and easily pulled Stephen onto his back.

“Because you’ve done the same thing to me you did to Greg Darby.

That’s how I know,” Jordan whispered. He touched Stephen’s chin, craning Stephen’s face toward him. Stephen waited to be hit.

Then Jordan brought his other hand to Stephen’s cheek, framing Stephen’s face as if surveying it.

Stephen raised a hand, his fingers tracing a path from Jordan’s brow to his upper lip, and then over his mouth, catching his lips briefly before outlining his jaw. Stephen smiled. “You could destroy me without even realizing it,” he whispered.

Then he remembered: something he thought had died in him in that explosion of hatred weeks before. The expression where the face goes lax as the body suddenly takes control. The eyes drowsy, the mouth slightly parted. Before Jordan’s mouth met his, Stephen almost said it out loud—the whisper face.

8

G
reg Darby stood wreathed in shadow next to the pond, his form outlined by the torrential rain.

Greg usually arrived when the rain did, as he had on that first afternoon at Camp Davis, when Brandon glimpsed him through the window of the mess hall. On that first day, all of the cadets had been forced to sit before their empty food bowls because fifteen of them had passed out during the regiment’s run. Greg had said nothing to him. Brandon had looked from the window to the squad captain, who stared back at Brandon with a gaze so penetrating he immediately believed the man was possessed of the ultimate knowledge. Brandon rocked back on his bench and collapsed to the floor. They had not been fed for twenty-four hours.

Inside Nanine Charbonnet’s half-finished guest cottage, Troy was screaming at his cousin. “Where are the fucking grenades? You promised fucking grenades!” The cousin had made good only on the promise of combat rifles and semtex. Ben and Rossi had been caught in the rain near the firing range. Brandon wondered if the storm would interfere with their chances of a kill. He wasn’t sure whether or not snakes slithered from the rain.

“Pestilence . . .” Greg whispered to him this time. Brandon nodded.

The others were becoming a problem. Troy’s cousin turned out to be less than reliable, and now there was his bullshit about wanting to join up. Before that, they’d had no trouble scaring off the Klan. The Mississippi boys in their pickup truck abandoned all talk of “unity and incorporation” when they saw the four soldiers of the Army of God emerge from the fringe of the clearing with their twelve-gauge combat rifles cocked against their shoulders.

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“Pestilence,” Brandon answered to the rain. I know, Greg, give me a break. This was the best way to start out, wasn’t it?

Greg was gone in a gust of raindrops.

Troy slammed the door, jarring the dead water moccasins where they hung from nails along the plywood wall. Their thick black bodies swung from arrow-shaped heads, driven through with nails. “Dammit, if he ain’t my cousin!” Troy said, sinking onto the step.

Years earlier, Troy’s father had taken a liking to sodomizing his only son during fishing trips. The practice lasted until Troy sent his father off the stern, headfirst into the propeller. Troy’s behavior didn’t go over well in his hometown of Boutte, given that his father had been recently elected sheriff. His mother couldn’t prove her son had killed her husband. She asked her two brothers to meet Troy in the driveway when he came home from school one afternoon. He was going to spend some time away, they told him as they loaded him into the back of the van. Troy rode to Camp Davis sandwiched between two of his uncles, one of them a cop, the other a shrimper.

Troy had told Brandon and the others that there was a gay bar outside of Boutte called Earl’s, a nondescript roadside shack given away by a rainbow-colored BUD LIGHT neon sign in the front window. As soon as Troy’s cousin got his ass in line, Earl’s would be the Army of God’s second strike.

Troy was their leader, Brandon their frontal lobe. Ben and Rossi were the foot soldiers. Troy always joked that the other two were “in it for the snakes”. But lately Troy was starting to joke too much for Brandon’s taste. Ever since the first strike Troy had relaxed and lost focus. Brandon was surly and impatient; he needed a strike to get his blood pumping. And worse, Greg was also appearing less and less frequently.

Rossi had shot the liquor truck driver and made the delivery himself, which made him “something”. Troy had finally calmed him down, but Brandon didn’t have the patience for that kind of shit and they all knew it.

“Says he’s got a new contact down in Venice. Works for Shell. Says he can get his hands on all kinda stuff they use for dredgin’.” Troy said, more to the rain than to Brandon.

“Not worth anything if he can’t get some fucking triggers next time.

That shit held us back more than a month,” Brandon said, his voice low.

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“Timer’s are better ’n triggers,” Troy added, dropping his voice, not wanting to start a fight. Brandon wanted triggers. Watching it on a TV

with shitty reception defeated the whole purpose. He wanted to be there, see it.

They heard the report of a combat rifle off in the distance before Rossi let out a cry audible over the patter of rain.

“What you thinkin’, Brandon?” Troy asked.

Brandon looked at Troy from where he sat on the edge of the porch.

“Snakes around the columns of the temples of salvation,” he told him.

Troy forced a smile that revealed his chipped front tooth. Troy had picked up the phrase from a pastor back in Boutte, and they’d adopted it as their mission statement. On the night of the strike, the four of them had grouped around the television, watching Letterman with the sound off, softly chanting the words until the BREAKING NEWS

banner blazed across the screen. They’d fallen respectfully silent at the sight of the French Quarter in flames.

Brandon looked back to the shadows by the pond where Greg had stood. He didn’t know the right way to tell Troy he was thinking about a bell tower and the boy who had started the pestilence.

Troy rose to his feet as Ben and Rossi stomped through the mud toward the guest house. He turned and went inside. Brandon hesitated, then followed.

Two cottonmouths were draped over Ben’s neck. The long body of a black moccasin trailed over Rossi’s shoulder as he held the head in his other hand.

“Nails’ll fix that,” Ben said.

The rain spattered through the holes in the ceiling. Brandon sat cross-legged at the foot of the half-built staircase just inside the front door. The rain made Troy nervous, and he paced across the cement floored room, an unfiltered Camel dangling from his lips.

“Any word?” Rossi asked as he dropped the moccasin to the floor.

“When there’s word, I’ll tell you,” Troy snapped.

Ben held up one of the cottonmouths for Brandon to study.

“Smaller.”

“Ain’t a moccasin,” Ben said, sounding wounded.

“Big ones look better on the wall,” Brandon said.

“Shit, Brandon, what you gotta be so particular for?”

Rossi had found the hammer and was trying to mend the mocca-The Army of God

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sin. The tool slipped and crashed to the cement floor. “Goddamn it!”

Brandon screamed.

They were all skittish. “You do inventory yet?” Troy asked Rossi.

Rossi’s eyes were on Brandon, who turned and walked back to the window. Troy batted Rossi’s chin to get his attention.

“What the hell I gotta do inventory for every day?” Rossi asked quietly.

“Goddamn thing’s below ground. Gotta check for leaks, cracks. All that kinda shit,” Troy said. A spray of rain doused his Camel. He spat it out and ground it with his heel.

Rossi set the mutilated moccasin down on the cement floor as he ducked out the door, disappeared through the rain toward the tool shed they referred to as the “storehouse”. It had once housed the construction equipment used to lay the foundation of the guest cottage.

Now its racks contained low-grade explosive devices, purloined by Troy’s cousin for a small fee.

Ben had stretched out his two cottonmouths on the floor. He was sharpening his Bowie knife, and the sounds the blade made as it grated the stone were sure to irritate Brandon. “Ben. Quit!” Troy said, his gaze drifting to Brandon, who paced slowly in the door frame.

“Ever seen how a snakeskin looks when you, like . . .” Ben began, still dragging the knife across the stone.

“Just quit!” Troy interrupted.

Ben paled and set the stone down on the floor. “How long till next strike?” he asked quietly.

Troy shook his head.

“Thibodaux,” Brandon said loudly.

Both boys were quietly surprised. They had all agreed months ago that Earl’s in Boutte would follow Sanctuary in New Orleans. “Brandon . . .” Troy said tiredly.

“Thibodaux!” Brandon shouted, before turning his back on both of them. “That’s where it started,” he whispered under his breath.

On that December night, secluded in his bedroom, Brandon had seen the shadow of Greg Darby in the portico of the bell tower. He had been sitting at his desk, inking the image of Stephen Conlin out of an old photograph.

Stephen Conlin. Not listed among the dead found in Sanctuary’s ruins.

“What the hell!”

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Brandon turned, startled by the sudden high pitch of Troy’s voice.

Strange light slid across the far wall, just above where Ben sat, the cottonmouths’ carcasses at his feet.

“Son of a bitch!” Troy yelled. A second later the light congealed into the twin beams of a car’s headlights.

“Posts!” Brandon roared.

Rossi hurled through the side door, panted, “There’s someone . . .”

“Posts!” Troy echoed, punching both fists against Rossi’s shoulder, pushing him toward the twelve gauges leaning against the wall.

The headlights grew as Ben and Rossi dashed out the side door. Troy rushed up the stairs bound for the upstairs window. Brandon balanced the butt of his rifle against his thigh and flattened his body against the edge of the window, just inside the front door. He peered out to see Ben and Rossi lugging their rifles into the darkness on either side of the clearing.

They had practiced this, but not in the rain. Their vision was limited. Troy had babbled about floodlights but there hadn’t been time.

Their intruder would drive into the clearing in complete darkness.

Ben and Rossi would fire a warning shot, signaling that the approaching car was alien to them. After that, they would ignite a dynamite charge in the center of the clearing.

Brandon kept still as the headlights beamed through the window and landed on the opposite wall. The car had rounded the bend fifty yards from the entrance to the clearing. The only sounds now were the drum of rain and the wet rasp of his own breathing.

“Brandon!”

The voice was soft and thin, muffled by rain. The car had reached the edge of the clearing, where its front tires had dipped at a point where the gravel road gave way to open mud. The vehicle was large, probably a Jeep.

“Brandon!”

Elise Charbonnet got out of the Explorer, splayed one hand in front of her face, shielding her face from the rain. The skeleton of the guest cottage looked desolate through the haze of rain. It was overgrown with weeds and vines. There were no signs of life. Elise pulled the gun from her raincoat, unnerved by the swamp darkness.

“Brandon Charbonnet!” Elise screamed as a rifle shot thundered The Army of God

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behind her. She pivoted, aimed the .35 into the darkness of pine trees, and squeezed. The kick set fire to her arm and knocked her backward into the mud.

She saw a flash of gunfire from the upstairs window. The slug from the twelve gauge slammed into the Explorer’s nose, popping the hood and shattering both headlights.

Elise fell and rolled toward the car, which in spite of the gunfire seemed to be the only refuge. Another explosion, this one from the other side, fractured the passenger-side window, and shards of glass spiraled outward. Male voices shouted from the guest house. Elise could barely make out “. . . fucking mother’s asshole! My fucking mother . . .”

before she heard the blast of her son’s rifle tear through the rotting insulation of the house. In a flash of yellow light that lit up the interior of the cottage for a brief instant, Elise saw the boy’s death. It wasn’t her son, she knew, as the slug hit the boy in the crotch, folding him in half. He flew up before thudding to the floor.

She hugged the mud under the Explorer’s nose as the second blast from a twelve gauge ripped the front driver’s-side tire. Pellets of rubber seared her face and she screamed, pulling the trigger on the

.35. The muzzle flare lit the muffler and engine in a brief flicker.

She held the trigger, foolishly thinking it would fire endlessly from under the car. It let out another slug, rocking the gun upward where it rammed something metal she couldn’t see. From the trees beside the road she heard a noise that sounded like a cat in heat. She knew it wasn’t her son—she knew his cry—as the victim howled in agony.

It took Elise a second to realize she was no longer holding the .35.

In darkness, she groped for the gun. Then she heard it, barely audible over the drum of the rain. It was a movie sound, a cartoon sound—a sputtering hiss that was more insistent than the rain. Blue sparks briefly illuminated a ragged young man, bracing himself against a pine trunk as he dropped the flickering end of a fuse to the mud at his feet.